Once again the Polish people teeter on the brink of the abyss. By this evening we should have some faint idea of whether the country is to be torn by strikes, factory occupations and street demonstrations or whether General Jaruzelski's military take-over has been bitterly accepted, in the words of the official proclamation, as the last chance for the Polish people to introduce order in their own home.

The proclamation of a military council of national salvation gives as its justification Solidarity's preparations for "a coup against the state". In classic terms of an armed uprising this is surely nonsensical. But the weekend demands from Gdansk, for a referendum on whether the people accepted the Government, wanted free elections for a new administration and whether or not they were prepared to guarantee Soviet "military interests", shoved too hard against a decayed and unstable structure. No doubt an embattled Mr Lech Walesa and the moderates around him assumed that the Polish people would, as they have always done, recognise the "geopolitical realities" of their position and assure the Warsaw Pact that they were not about to break ranks militarily. But it was an appalling gamble even to suggest asking people whether they would, in effect, like Poland to go neutral.

The proclamation is carefully worded; putting aside talk of coups. The council is to be a temporary body, imposing martial law for a transitional period. And, to underline the claim that the reform movement of the past fifteen months is not to be abandoned, the council ordered the arrest of the former party boss, Edward Gierek.

For some time now the army has been used, with popular support, to supplement the paralysed administration in rural areas. The military dictatorship – for that is what it is – may actually have struck a popular chord when it stated yesterday that "the chief issue is to ensure the supply of food and medicine to the population during the winter conditions".

President Reagan was right, earlier in the year, to insist that destruction of the Polish experiment from within would be as intolerable as destruction from without. But that situation has not, yet – quite – arisen. If Poland can survive the next couple of days, the General will still have the opportunity to try for the accord he has long claimed as essential between the Government, Solidarity and the Church. The West can only wait and pray and report the fearful cost all of us – the Soviet Union and the West as well as the brave Polish people – would pay in the event of full scale repression.